New York State Earth Science Instructional Collection Scope

Collection purpose

The New York State Earth Science Instructional Collection (NYSESIC) is a thematic collection focusing on instructional materials that support teaching and learning in relation to the New York Earth science regents exam.

Collection scope

The scope of the collection includes the topics of the New York Earth science curriculum. The topics covered by the collection include solid earth forms and processes, atmospheric compostition and dynamics, forms and mechanics of water, bodies and mechanics in space, Earth history and Earth models.

Collection policy

The materials accessible in the collection support the New York science education standards, geography education standards, and inquiry-based learning. These materials support and increase understanding about Earth science concepts and processes relevant to New York learners. The types of materials to be collected include:

• hands-on classroom and lab activities
• lessons
• experiments
• problem sets
• projects
• exploration of data and imagery

Supplementary materials that are often included in the above types of resources or considered stand-alone resources include:

• computer simulations
• visualizations
• imagery
• models
• data sets
• virtual field trips

All resources in the collection are reviewed by practicing teachers and science educators. These educators are a select and diverse group that was designed to ensure excellence and relevance to a wide range of learning environments. Resources are applicable to K-12 or informal learning environments.

Resource selection process

Resources that comprise the nucleus of the collection were selected through a workshop in Oneonta, New York on June 26-27, 2005 that was attended by 16 teachers who brought in their own developed materials like lessons, activities or simulations. The workshop group was divided into four subgroups. Members of each subgroup presented their resources to other members of their subgroup. Scientific and pedagogical feedback was provided from subgroup members. Suggested changes were incorporated into the resources, thereby creating the original draft version of the resource.

After this first revision phase, resources were shared among all the subgroups for a second round of review. Again, comments and suggestion were incorporated into the resources.

This draft resource was then submitted to a formal, structured review process (http://www.dlesecommunity.org/nyreview.html) that automatically records and archives review data by each individual group member. Each individual also conducts independent reviews of at least 6 resources that have been submitted by fellow groups members. Review data are compiled and sites are given a composite score that determines if the resource is exemplary and should be included in the collection. Resources that pass review are no longer draft. They are considered final and are then cataloged. Resources that do not pass the review are reworked until they do or they are not included in the collection.

Cataloging protocol

The overall cataloging philosophy is to describe resources with sufficient detail to support discovery, comprehension and reuse.

Community contributions

As a community-based collection project, NYSESIC encourages and depends upon community contributions of resources. In this case, the NYESIC resources were contributed by New York Earth science educators who are recognized leaders within the state. However, the intent was that the resources that were identified and catalogued from the June 2005 workshop would serve as the nucleus of a larger collection. Ideally, the collection would ultimately grow from the contributions of any teacher that has either identified or developed resources that would be useful in supporting teaching and learning within the framework of the New York Earth science curriculum. However, at this initial stage, determining the suitability of the resources is solely the responsibility of the June 2005 working group.

Granularity

In addition to providing access to resources of exemplary quality, a goal of the NYSESIC collection is to ensure that the collection is populated with items that specifically address the many particular components of t the Nh items that specifically address the many particular components of t the New York Earth science curriculum. When a teacher or learner conducts a search for a specific item, the resulting list of records should be both relatively small and highly focused. As such, the approach is to catalog at a fine level of granularity, carefully cataloging the smaller specific items within larger sites that meet the exemplary criteria.

Resource description

All resources are catalog with DLESE required metadata using the appropriate DLESE metadata framework(s) (plural if the annotations are done/required).

Contact information

For any question regarding this collection please contact the DLESE Program Center, support@dlese.org.

Resource terms of use

For each resource, NYSESIC attempts to provide a copyright statement or information on how resource may be lawfully used. Library users are encouraged to read such information or go directly to the cataloged resource to obtain the latest copyright or terms of use information for a resource. If a copyright statement cannot be determined readily, NYSESIC follows the DLESE protocol by including the following statement: Copyright and Other Restrictions Information is Unknown.

Metadata terms of use

NYESIC metadata is Copyright (c) 2005 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), but metadata may be used as long it is consistent with the DLESE Intellectual Property Policy, which can be found at: http://www.dlese.org/documents/policy/DLESE_IP_approved.html. This allows for the redistribution of metadata records. Individual metadata records are available for harvest from DLESE.

Resource quality assurance

The NYSESIC collection strives to be a very high-quality collection for educators of New York because of the resource selection process described above.

Metadata quality assurance

Metadata records are generated by UCAR staff with quality assurance being performed at the DLESE Program Center (DPC). This process facilitates the creation of metadata records with a high degree of consistency and reflects the resource cataloging best practices as defined by DLESE.

Persistence plan

The collection is expected to continue growing throughout the life of the project. Currently, funding is available through the end of December 2005. It is not anticipated that additional reviewed resources will be added to this collection after this date. Furthermore, after this date there will be no special maintenance activities for the collection other than what would be expected for any resource in the overall DLESE collection. However, resources may be deaccessioned by DLESE over time if they no longer are accessible or meet accession criteria. Furthermore, the DPC also has permission to modify NYSESIC records as it sees fit to maintain the integrity of the metadata (e.g. correct a URL that has changed).

Last updated: 2006-01-31
Maintained by: Katy Ginger (support@dlese.org), DLESE Metadata

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